Black Sunday

Black Sunday is remembered as the single worst day of bug exploitation in Kingdom of Loathing history. A major meat creation bug was discovered, and the knowledge of the exploitation was quickly dispersed into the KoL public. Those willing to abuse the game system were able to obtain extraordinary amounts of meat by using meat vortices while having 0 meat in possession. Meat gained on Black Sunday was later coined "bugmeat."

Compounding the problem was a large item duping bug that was discovered and exploited with clan stashes. This combination of massive stashes of items and large meat values in essence crashed the KoL economy, sending item values into the billions and the mall to be entirely bought out within hours. At least one person got a very long ban due to their actions on this day.

Shortly after, large portions of the KoL community urged Jick to initiate a rollback -- a restoration to a previous backup of player information on the database -- or to reset. Jick chose an alternative tactic and created meatsinks, new gameplay elements implemented specifically to remove meat from the economy. Thus were born the Penguin Mafia and Uncle P's Antiques.

Don Pygoscelis, a character created and operated by the development team, automatically detected and removed large portions of meat from the inventories of exploiters. Uncle P's Antiques - owned by (the more or less fictitious) Don Pygoscelis - sold expensive items in an attempt to lure those with bugmeat to buy items and thus remove excess meat from the Kingdom's economy. Two such expensive items included the 'Villa' document (500 million meat), which allowed access to a new chat channel, and the Mr. Exploiter (1 billion meat), a completely useless accessory meant only to be a symbol of shameful prestige.

The Penguin Raffles also helped to sink bugmeat out of the economy. The rewards for the Penguin Raffles included the Mafia wines, cement shoes, Mafia bow ties, Mafia violin cases, Mafia stogies, and Mafia knickerbockers. Mob hits and protection contracts were also added to Uncle P's services later on, leeching additional meat from the Kingdom, though they were quickly removed. Uncle P's was eventually destroyed when the yetis returned to the Icy Peak, although it did return in the aftermath of the White Wednesday time crisis.